Death of Moulton: my first thought this morning

Publisher and editor William Upham Moulton died on February 19, 1898, leaving behind his wife Louise Chandler Moulton. They had been married just over 42 years. A well-known poet and author, Mrs. Moulton was deeply saddened by the loss of her husband and, two years later, on the anniversary of his death, she wrote in her journal:

Two years ago this day Mr. Moulton passed out of life. It was my first thought this morning, and the sadness of it has been with me all day.

Years earlier, Mrs. Moulton had considered the possibility that she might predecease her much older husband. Her poem "Wife to Husband" imagines such a scenario and grants permission for him to remarry, so long as she is remembered:

If I am dust while thou art quick and glad,
Bethink thee, sometimes, what good cheer we had, —
What happy days beside the shining seas,
Or by the twilight fire in careless ease,
Reading the rhymes of some old poet lover,
Or whispering our own love-story over.

When thou hast mourned for me a fitting space,
And set another in my vacant place,
Charmed with her brightness, trusting in her truth,
Warmed to new life by her beguiling youth,
Be happy, dearest one, and surely know
I would not have thee thy life's joys forego.

Yet think of me sometimes, where cold and still
I lie, who once was swift to do thy will,
Whose lips so often answered to thy kiss,
Who dying blessed thee for that bygone bliss, —
I pray thee do not bar my presence, quite,
From thy new life, so full of new delight.

I would not vex thee, waiting by thy side;
My shadow should not chill thy fair young bride;
Only bethink thee how alone I lie! —
To die and be forgotten were to die
A double death; and I deserve of thee
Some grace of memory, fair howe'er she be.

Despite these sentiments, Mrs. Moulton herself never remarried. Incidentally, though obituaries for Mr. Moulton referred to him as "a man of flawless integrity and the highest sense of honor," Fanny Fern might have disagreed.

Moulton: as from a passing cloud

Louise Chandler Moulton was uneasy as she sailed back to the United States from Europe in 1891. Just before leaving, she had received a telegram informing her of her mother's illness. As she sailed, she remarked on the lovely weather, but noted, "I am so anxious as to what news of my poor mother awaits me." Sure enough, upon landing, she learned that her mother died on October 26, 1891 (she is pictured here in healthier times). Moulton had missed the funeral as well. As she recorded in her journal: "Oh, what it is to know that I shall never see her again!"

Moulton herself died only 27 years later. Her mother figured more than once in her poetry. One poem is called "My Mother's Picture":

How shall I here her placid picture paint
   With touch that shall be delicate, yet sure?
   Soft hair above a brow so high and pure
Years have not soiled it with an earthly taint,
Needing no aureole to prove her saint;
   Firm mind that no temptation could allure;
   Soul strong to do, heart stronger to endure;
And calm, sweet lips, that utter no complaint.

So have I seen her, in my darkest days
   And when her own most sacred ties were riven,
Walk tranquilly in self-denying ways,
   Asking for strength, and sure it would be given;
Filling her life with lowly prayer, high praise, —
   So shall I see her, if we meet in heaven.

Another poem, "A Dream in the Night," is subtitled "To My Mother," and more expressly addresses her dead mother:

Sometimes it seems thy face —thy long-hid face —
   Looks out on me as from a passing cloud,
   Till I forget they clad thee in thy shroud,
And laid thee sleeping in thy far-off place —
So once again the tender, healing grace
   Of thy dear presence is to me allowed.
   Wilt thou not bless the head before thee bowed?
Wilt not thy voice thrill through the empty space?

How lone and cold the world without thee seemed!
   Regaining thee, how warm it is and bright!
      Yet all in vain to reach thee do I seek: —
And then I wake to know I have but dreamed,
   And thou art silent as the silent night —
      With tears I call thee, yet thou dost not speak.

Moultons: the way through life

Six weeks after graduating from a women's seminary in Troy, New York, the Connecticut-born poet (Ellen) Louise Chandler married William Upham Moulton on August 27, 1855. Mr. Moulton was the editor of The True Flag in Boston and had published some of Miss Chandler's earliest writings.

Within a year, the newly-married Mrs. Moulton published Juno Clifford, her second book, though its title page bore only "by a lady." The book was praised by many, including Sarah Helen Whitman, who served as a sort of mentor to the younger writer. Her only book prior to her marriage, This, That, and the Other (which, incidentally, did bear her real name) combined both prose and poetry. Among the poems is "My Wife: An Impromptu":

Where the maples nodded together,
   At the edge of the pathless wood,
With a basket of ripe red berries,
   A sweet little maiden stood.
Her hair was like shadows of sunset,
   Falling soft over meadows asleep,
Or the earliest break of the morning
   Pouring gold upon lull-side and steep.

The green leaves lay light on her forehead,
   As if wood-nymphs were crowning their queen;
And the tremulous smile of the sunshine
   Slept warm on the tresses between;
The blue-bells were nodding beside her,
   But her bright eyes were bluer to see,
As they turned, with an innocent gladness,
   That fair summer morning, on me!

Her cheeks wore the hue of ripe peaches
   The sunlight so often hath kissed,
And her figure was light as the fairies
   That ride on the morning's blue mist!
But her voice was like nothing, save Eden,
   And the musical breezes which blow
Over meadows that sleep in the sunshine,
   Where never falls tempest or snow!

And she said, with her blue eyes uplifted,
   And a blush on her berry-brown cheek,
"Will you show me the way, sir, to Ashley?'"
   And her voice was so gentle and meek,
That I caught to my heart the maiden,
   And sued her to be my wife;
So I showed her the way to Ashley,
   And she shows me the way through life.

Moulton: dead and buried underground

Louise Chandler Moulton was 73 years old when she died on August 10, 1908. She had been a prolific poet, prose writer, and editor, contributing particularly to The True Flag in Boston (founded by her husband William U. Moulton, who died ten years before she did) and the New York Tribune. She was buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery. About a month earlier, she had asked her friend Thomas Wentworth Higginson about death. "Your question touches depths," he responded. "I never in my life felt any fear of death, as such. I never think of my friends as buried."

Though she wrote many poems and stories for children, many of her works also focus on death, as in "When I Am Dead":

When I am dead and buried underground,
And your dear eyes still greet the shining day,
Will you remember — "Thus she used to say —
And thus, and thus, her low voice used to sound"?
Will memory wander like a ghost around
The well-known paths — tread the accustomed way;
Or will you pluck fresh blossoms of the May,
And waste no rose upon my burial mound?

I would not have your life to sorrow wed —
Your joyous youth grief-stricken for my sake;—
Though black-winged Care her home with you should make,
Yet vain would be the scalding tears you shed;
And though your heart for love of me should break,
How could I hear, or heed, if I were dead?

And then there's her poem "What She Said In Her Tomb," which concludes with a similar message:

Now, at last, I lie asleep
   Where no morrows break, —
Why take heed to tread so soft? —
   Fear you lest I wake?

Time there was when I was red
   As a rose in June
With the kisses of your lips, —
   Ah, they failed me soon.

Now they would not warm my mouth
   Though they fell like rain:
I am marble, dear; and they
   Marble cannot stain.

Ah, if you had loved me more,
   Been content to wait,
Some time you had found the key
   To Love's inmost gate.

Why, indeed, should any man
   Wait for Autumn days,
When the present Summer wooes
   To her rosy ways?

Only, — now I lie here dead;
   I shall not awake,
And you need not tread so soft
   For my deaf ears' sake.

Moulton: Easter morn she kneels and prays

Louise Chandler Moulton struggled with a title for the book that would be published in late 1889. She had considered Vagrant Moods and a friend suggested The Primrose Path but the collection ultimately carried the title In the Garden of Dreams: Lyrics and Sonnets. A friend from Rome wrote to her, "What a perfect title!" and admitted he had been taking a long walk through her dreamy garden.

John Greenleaf Whittier (who was the subject of one of the poems) particularly praised the sonnets in the collection. As he saw it, "the sonnet was never set to such music before, nor ever weighted with more deep and tender thought." Oliver Wendell Holmes, whom Moulton had sought for advice on the book, said it seemed "to hold leaves torn out of the heart's record."

Moulton also experimented with French forms and had a section of rondels and rondeaux. Included among the collection was a poem titled "Easter Sunday":

Easter morn she kneels and prays,
   A gentle saint in baby blue—
Forgive her that her hat is new,
   And all those dear, coquettish ways.

Her loyal soul pure tribute pays
   To that high throne where prayers are due,
At Easter, when she kneels and prays,
   A gentle saint in baby blue.

So innocent her girlish days
   She scarcely knows what sins to rue,
   What pard'ning grace from Heaven to sue,
As, glad with morning's gladdest rays,
A gentle saint, she kneels and prays.

Moulton: as the fragrance of a rose

In 1889, the Connecticut-born writer Louise Chandler Moulton published her book of poems In the Garden of Dreams (she gave a copy as a Christmas gift to her friend Thomas Wentworth Higginson; that copy has been digitally scanned here). Though a published author for 35 years, she turned to a veteran writer for advice: Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes. In a letter dated December 29, 1889, Holmes wrote to her:

I thank you most cordially for sending me your beautiful volume of poems. They tell me that they are breathed from a woman's heart as plainly as the fragrance of a rose reveals its birthplace. I have read nearly all of them — a statement I would not venture to make of most of the volumes I receive, the number of which is legion, and I cannot help feeling flattered that the author of such impassioned poems should have thought well enough of my own productions to honor me with the kind words I find on the blank leaf of a little book that seems to me to hold leaves torn out of the heart's record.

Holmes may have been impressed as early as the first page, which printed a poem of lament for the past titled "Come Back, Dear Days":

Come back, dear days, from out the past!
...I see your gentle ghosts arise;
You look at me with mournful eyes,
And then the night grows vague and vast:
You have gone back to Paradise...

You left no pledges when you went:
The years since then are bleak and cold;
No bursting buds the Junes unfold.
While you were here my all I spent;
Now I am poor and sad and old.

Within a couple years of this letter, Holmes would become one of the last of his generation of authors still living — a frequently lamented fact. Earlier, Holmes had written a poem, "No Time Like the Old Time," about his own nostalgia for the "dear days" of old:

There is no time like the old time, when you and I were young,
When the buds of April blossomed and the birds of springtime sung!

A will that might have subjugated an empire

Juno Clifford, a novella, was published in 1855, attributed only to "A Lady." That lady was, in fact, 19-year old Louise Chandler Moulton — an up and coming writer from Boston (originally from Connecticut, where she was educated alongside Edmund Clarence Stedman). Moulton had only recently published her first book of poems and, hoping to get advice, she contacted a more established woman writer to get an opinion.

In a letter dated November 15, 1855, Sarah Helen Whitman wrote to Moulton: "It is a very fascinating story, eloquently related." Whitman was, for a time, one of the most famous woman poets in the United States (more recently overshadowed by her involvement with Edgar Allan Poe) so her compliments rank highly. "You have all the qualities requisite for a successful novelist," she wrote, "and some very rare ones, as I think." The Providence, Rhode Island-based writer was so taken by Juno Clifford that she wrote and published a review of it.

But Whitman did not offer praise exclusively. In the book, Juno unofficially adopts a boy only 12 years younger than she. They separate for a time but meet again when he has grown up — and she falls in love with him. On the anniversary of her husband's death, Juno reveals her love and is immediately scorned; he thinks of her as a mother. "In a paroxysm of despair," she fell to the floor and began "tearing out her magnificent hair by handfuls." Whitman thought the scene a bit much and also noted, "there is a lavish expenditure of love scenes in the latter part of the book."

Whatever the flaws, the book is well-written, particularly for such a young author. Moulton's prose style flows very easily and pulls in the reader from its first page:

Juno Clifford stood before the mirror of her richly furnished breakfast parlor... It was ten o'clock. Men, whose business hours had commenced, were hurrying to and fro in the street — the city was teeming with life and turbulent with noise, but the hum only stole through the heavily curtained windows of that lofty house on Mount Vernon street, with a subdued cadence that was very pleasant. It was a lounging, indolent attitude, in which the lady stood. In her whole style of manner there was a kind of tropical languor, and it was easy to see that she was seldom roused from her habitual calmness. And yet there was something in the curving of her dainty lips, the full sweep of her arching brows, nay, in every motion of her hand, which told of a slumbering power; an energy, resistless in its intensity; a will that might have subjugated an empire.